MotoGP: Iker Lecuona impressing on Friday practice, finishing P5 overall
20-year old Tech3 rider Iker Lecuona finished Friday fifth overall.
Iker Lecuona has had a bit of a turbulent start to his MotoGP career, taking 3 DNF’s in his first three races before taking his best race result so far of ninth at Austria, backing this up with a tenth place a week later.
The Spaniard finished FP2 in P4, the faster session of the two, lapping nearly two seconds faster than his 1:34.553 FP1 time which put him in P20 overall, his FP2 time was 1’32.675 which was only 0.486 from the P1 time of Fabio Quartararo, this FP2 time would’ve put Lecuona in P2 for FP1. This meant that overall, Lecuona finished in fifth place in the combined standings.
Lecuona has come under criticism since his MotoGP start, debuting at Valencia 2019 at just 19-years old, people have said he is not fast enough and too young, but slowly but surely he is chipping away, making steps towards the front. Tech3 team manager Herve Poncharal has already confirmed he is impressed with Lecuona and has no thoughts about replacing him, even for Andrea Dovizioso.
Speaking about this weekend, Lecuona was happy about the work so far and how he has improved, “I am very happy, a good start for me, for sure the test here helped me for the reference. But also the experience [I have] now, I have more experience with this bike and the team, I learned a lot the last few weeks in the GP’s, here I struggled a lot in the test but now it is easier to adapt [to the bike].
It’s true the bike was amazing, the work with the bike is really good and I feel really confident with the bike and when I have the time attack I go alone without a reference and I improve my lap time a lot.” Proving that he is improving bit by bit, every round Lecuona has shown improvement to get to where he is now.
“It is an Iker 2.0, it is a big difference in my riding style in general, and now I understand a lot of things, I understand the tyre for example when its ok to push and when it’s not so yeah the experience now is a big big difference so it is more easy for me to adapt and manage the moment.”
We are saying it now. He will win a race this season, big call we know, but keep your eye on him.
Featured image – www.motogp.com
